{"id":10154,"date":"2025-08-27T14:40:18","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T19:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=10154"},"modified":"2025-08-27T14:40:20","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T19:40:20","slug":"as-measles-exploded-officials-in-texas-looked-to-cdc-scientists-under-trump-no-one-answered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/08\/27\/as-measles-exploded-officials-in-texas-looked-to-cdc-scientists-under-trump-no-one-answered\/","title":{"rendered":"As Measles Exploded, Officials in Texas Looked to CDC Scientists. Under Trump, No One Answered."},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/news\/article\/texas-measles-outbreak-cdc-vaccines-rfk-trump\/\">KFF<\/a> As measles surged in Texas early this year, the Trump administration\u2019s actions sowed fear and confusion among CDC scientists that kept them from performing the agency\u2019s most critical function \u2014 emergency response \u2014 when it mattered most, an investigation from KFF Health News shows. The outbreak soon became the worst the United States has endured in over three decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the month after Donald Trump took office, his administration&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/25502931-acting-hhs-secretary-communications-memo-1-21-25\/\">interfered with<\/a>&nbsp;Centers for Disease Control and Prevention communications,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/news\/article\/cdc-trump-mmwr-bird-flu-studies-blocked-meddling\/\">stalled<\/a>&nbsp;the agency\u2019s&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/news\/article\/cdc-data-analyses-missing-mmwr-bird-flu-seasonal-influenza\/\">reports<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/health\/archive\/2025\/01\/cdc-dei-scientific-data\/681531\/\">censored<\/a>&nbsp;its data, and abruptly&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2025\/02\/14\/politics\/probationary-federal-employees-agencies-firings-doge\">laid off<\/a>&nbsp;staff. In the chaos, CDC experts felt restrained from talking openly with local public health workers, according to interviews with seven CDC officials with direct knowledge of events, as well as local health department emails obtained by KFF Health News through public records requests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cCDC hasn\u2019t reached out to us locally,\u201d Katherine Wells, the public health director in Lubbock, Texas, wrote in a Feb. 5 email exchange with a colleague two weeks after children with measles were hospitalized in Lubbock. \u201cMy staff feels like we are out here all alone,\u201d&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/08\/170_4ea49e.pdf\">she added<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KFF As measles surged in Texas early this year, the Trump administration\u2019s actions sowed fear and confusion among CDC scientists that kept them from performing the agency\u2019s most critical function \u2014 emergency response \u2014 when it mattered most, an investigation from KFF Health News shows. The outbreak soon became the worst the United States has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-measles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10155,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10154\/revisions\/10155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}